It once was lost, but now is found!

A while back we reported that the local Post Office left. There was sign in Russian on the door, but we had no idea what it said and kept forgetting to bring a dictionary, or just ask someone.
Two days ago as we were leaving the apartment to go somewhere we bumped into the neighbour who was going to that general area. We asked her if she knew where the Post Office had gone. She didn't know because she doesn't use it. She offered to go with us and look at the sign though.
Once we got there, she simply laughed and said "The sign says 'Go to the back of this building to the temporary entrance"! And for how long did I prowl the streets looking for it!
Moral of the Story: learn Russian (gasp).

One flew over the Cooke-coos nest

Perhaps someone out there can explain some bird behaviour for us. We've begun noticing every evening flocks of crows flying in one direction, about 30 minutes before the sun goes down. 15 minutes before the sun goes down jackdaws come flying by. Loads of them. I read once that these sorts of birds all roost in one tree, or clump of trees. Now that it is winter, I suppose this is what they are doing. It is nice to see them, right on schedule, telling us that the working day is almost over.

You may have read the post about the electricity going out. Well, what we neglected to explain is that it goes out rather regularly. At least once a week. But never when the neighbours upstairs are blasting their loud heavy metal music.

Just when you thought it was safe...

        One challenge we faced when we arrived was a mailing address. We found a place to live relatively quickly, but would it be the place we'd live in for the next year? We couldn't say yes then, and so couldn't use the apartment address for a mailing address. It didn't help that our address actually changed the month we moved in! Yes, the street names just ... changed.
        To solve that dilemma we decided to go rent a post box at the local post office. It took a few trips to get the lingo correct, and to arrive at the precise moment the only authorized person to handle post boxes was present (long lunch breaks and other absences are an artistic endeavour here it seems), but we did it! 2000 tenge later(Kazakstan's money) and we had ourselves a post box for the year. We were pleased. I even checked it the next day to see if any fliers had been delivered. Ah well, for all the other hassles there are here, fliers in the mail doesn't seem to be one of them.
        So, a week later I am walking by the building and what!? The post office is gone. Gone. And so is our box. There is a cryptic notice on the door where it used to be be, but it is in Russian (the most complex language in the world mind you: I once looked up a word in the dictionary and it wasn't there. This language includes all of the difficult conjugation rules of other languages -suffixes, prefixes, gender, location, tense, plural/singular, mid-word-iffixes, whatever challenge you may have with Chinese, German, Italian, French, Polynesian languages, etc, all those tough grammar and conjugation rules are in Russian, but not always in the same order). Supposedly it is relocated to a place on our street.
        Now I have to find where our post box has gone.

3:46 am

Being sick is not fun. One plus side is that you may end up sitting up at 3:46 am, just the time when internet access is cheapest in Kazakstan! Noisy neighbours above you who seem to be reenacting scenes from "Fight Club" don't help with the sleep factor.

On another note, we had snow for the first time this past Sunday.

On yet another note, November 11th marks 9 years since I first left Canada for overseas life. Nine years.

It also marks 2 years and 1 month of married life!

Cats and Rain and Mud

It is Winter now, and that means that we see less of something quite interesting: people out walking with their cats. It may be hard to believe, but the cats in this city actually walk with their owners when they are out! And they don't have leashes either. Even out in public along the busy Riverwalk area people would be out with a cat trailing behind. Even more amazing would be the people out with a cat AND a dog. The dog would be leashed however. Now that the winter has arrived, we won't be seeing the cats so much.

And speaking of Winter, it has arrived in all its muddy glory. We were told there were essentially three seasons here: Summer, Winter, and Muddy. We were hoping it wasn't true. So far it has proven to be so, even though we had some snow several days ago which stayed. That gave us hope. Then it melted, and the falling snow increasingly has turned into rain/sleet. It is also very windy, but so far the temperature hasn't been unbearable.

No electricity

Several mornings ago we awoke and sensed something was off. Literally, there was! The electricity! This has happened before, and usually it would be back on by noon, or by nightfall. Also, usually the whole block was off, but this time when we looked into the stairwell, we could see that the elevator worked, and the lights were on.
I checked the fusebox, and 3 out of the 4 fuses were tripped. It seemed all we had to do was flip them on and problem solved, but nothing happened.
Upon closer inspection, it appeared as though someone had taken part of the fusebox! We called our landlord since we didn't know who to call, and when he arrived he confirmed it. Yes, someone had come and stolen all the secondary fuses from the first five floors, a total of 20 units.
As is usual in Central Asia, no one seemed bothered by this. We talked with a few other tenants and they just said some electrician would come to fix it. We called our landlord again and he told us he had arranged for someone to come and fix things. We thought this meant "replace the fuses".
Sure enough this morning someone came sauntering over from the construction site nearby and came to our floor. He opened the box and you could see the gaps left behind by the stolen fuses. The man then simply rewired our apartment's wires straight into what looked like the main cables! He also added some joiner so others could plug in. When I pointed out the empty slots, and the other apartments, he just shrugged, packed up his things, and left.
We are glad we have our power back on, but now it seems we are one of the only ones!